David Burn
Name: David "Dave" Charles Burn Gender: Male Age: 15 Hobbies and Interests: video games, Professional Wrestling, Reading, Walking. Appearance: Dave stands at 5'8 and weighs 130lbs, placing him firmly in the lower boundary for a healthy weight at his size. This is reflected in his very slim build, with little fat or muscle to be found around his body, other than in his legs, which are slightly toned, thanks to Dave's habit of walking everywhere. Thanks to this activeness, he tends to keep a light, if uneven, tan throughout most of the summer. Thanks to a childhood accident, however, Dave has a number of scars on his back, which have never fully healed. The brief teasing about them after has made him very self-conscious about them, though, as well as making his back weaker than the rest of his body. Dave's ash blonde hair is usually kept fairly short, thanks to it's tendency to curl when it gets longer. His fringe tends to reach three-quarters of the way to his wide, blue eyes, and he keeps the sides long to hide his larger than average ears (another source of teasing as a child.) Below his large nose, he keeps the lower half of his face covered in patchy stubble, more out of laziness than anything else. Clothing-wise, Dave tends to stick to plain jackets or jumpers and jeans, occasionally throwing in a hoodie or a coat during the winter. On the announcement day that his class was picked, Dave wore a light brown hooded zip-up jacket, a black Iron Maiden T-Shirt featuring the cover art for their single The Trooper, a pair of baggy faded jeans and a pair of dark brown Airwalk running shoes. Biography: Dave was born, completely unplanned, to Lucy Marchant and Anthony Burn, a plumber and a high-school drop-out who were dating in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Lucy quickly found herself unable to cope with having to care for a child while her boyfriend was working, and quickly gave custody over to him. However, within a matter of days, Dave found himself living with his mother's grandparents, where Dave remained until he was five months old. His great-grandparents, both retired, also inevitably found themselves unable to cope with caring for him. This forced Dave to move again, this time to his father's parents. This move, however, remained permanent, and Dave has lived with them ever since. Dave's grandparents managed to keep in touch with his father and great-grandparents, arranging regular visits to them; however his mother couldn't be contacted. On the whole, Dave gets along well with them, however the occasional disagreements he has with them tend to escalate quickly until he retreats to his room. Dave started in school at five much like the other children; however from Second Grade onwards he was bullied by the bigger children. Too scared to tell the teachers, and too weedy at the time to do much about it, Dave ended up becoming a bit of a recluse for most of his early school years, sticking close to a small group of friends. During one of his visits to his great-grandparent's house, however, he changed the channel by accident while watching a cartoon and found himself watching a wrestling program and was instantly hooked by it. He viewed it as people standing up to their own bullies, and treated it as a more exciting version of the cartoons he was used to. Since the first episode he saw, the 8-year-old watched intently every time he visited his great-grandparents from that point on, cheering for the good guys and booing the villains every episode, and eventually found a group of other fans of wrestling at his school. For these hyperactive kids, "Don't do this at home" meant nothing to them, as they tried to replicate all their favourite moves after school, regularly coming home with grazes, cuts, and worse. The school eventually stepped in after one of the other boys dived off of a climbing frame and broke his arm, separating the group. Soon after, Dave had an accident. While he was playing one morning with a box of Lego, he accidentally knocked a mug of coffee onto his back. He was rushed to hospital, where the burns were treated, but unfortunately, the accident permanently left his back scarred. As Dave grew older, he got calmer, his visits to his great-grandparents' house got more infrequent and eventually stopped watching wrestling altogether. He quickly took to reading books in the school's library. He progressed quickly through the books, eventually progressing to the point where he was reading novels at the age of eight. It was around this time that his mother contacted his grandparents for the first time in years, informing them that Dave now had a half-sister, Bethany. They met around his great-grandparent's house (Dave's mother conspicuously absent from the meeting) and got on well, despite a difference of upbringing. Dave maintains a good relationship with her to the present day. When Middle School rolled around, most of his friends ended up moving to different schools, leaving Dave lost, to say the least. With none of his friends around, Dave sunk back into keeping his head down, not saying anything to the kids bigger than him and hoping they paid no attention to him. With nothing much better to do, Dave spent most of his time in the school library, becoming close friends with a few people who hung around in there. Once Dave got to high school, he found that several of his old friends had moved up with him, allowing him to break out of his shell, so to speak. His old friends seemed to be much unchanged from how they were, and they quickly set about trying to start their old hobby back up. However, Dave found that with the injuries to his back, he was unable to, so they all settled with a common ground: video games. They all owned one of the systems at the time as a present or a whimsical buy, even if they hadn’t unwrapped them. They all got into them, playing the same games as each other, and eventually that became their substitute for the old fights. Outside of his close friends, Dave doesn’t really talk to that many people around school, although he usually remembers faces and names well. In his classes, Dave is generally considered above-average in his classes, however, he only really excels in Math, being considered one of the best in his class. Advantages: Dave is used to walking long distances to traversing the island shouldn't prove too much of a problem for him. Thanks to his friends’ roughness when they playfought, Dave learned how to take a punch, making him pretty resilient in fistfights. Disadvantages: Dave has a reputation for being a "smart-ass" at times, which doesn’t help when making allies. Dave’s back is still injured from an accident and that could definitely come to play in a fight. Dave, being "trained" to fight by watching wrestling on television, is prone to thinking that flashy moves such as dropkicks or enziguris would work in actual fights. Dave keeps firmly within his tight-knit group of friends, which means he’s reluctant to work with anyone else, which could cause problems if he never meets them. Designated Number: Male Student #1 --- Designated Weapon: Pipe Wrench Conclusion: Will probably end up killed in a flourishing move, although that Pipe Wrench may come in handy if he can smarten up quick. The above biography is as written by Moonlight Drive. No edits or alterations to the author's original work have been made. Evaluations Kills: None Killed By: Tyler Blake Collected Weapons: Pipe Wrench (assigned weapon) Allies: Megan Jacobson, Jennifer Steinman Enemies: None Mid-game Evaluation: Post-Game Evaluation: Memorable Quotes: *''"I'm David Burn, and if I had a nickel for every person in this compound more of a badass than me right now, I would have no nickels."'' Other/Trivia * Dave apparently named his pipe wrench "Janice", and refers to it as his new best friend. * Dave was inactive-killed after his original handler went inactive with him. Threads Below is a list of threads that contain David, in chronological order. *You're Gonna Go Far, Kid. *Try Not to Fumble *Falling to Pieces *Bat Country *Viva La Raza *Captain America Your Thoughts Whether you were a fellow handler in SOTF: The Program or just an avid reader of the site, we'd like to know what you thought about David Burn. What did you like, or dislike, about the character? Let us know here! *Dave is a very interesting case. As far as kind of wacky characters go, he was one of the better ones, which I think is largely due to what he dealt with. Dave didn't really go up against any of the really nasty horrors that The Program has to offer, which allowed his more whimsical narration to still feel appropriate. In fact, Dave seemed about to take a turn for the more serious prior to his inactivity. Unfortunately, that inactivity brings a sudden and kind of jarring end to Dave's story. It did some great stuff for setting up the end of Tyler's story, yeah, but Dave felt like he could've amounted to a lot more. As it is, he's a pretty fun read who never really feels like he gets out of the early game mode until it's too late to go anywhere with that. - MurderWeasel Category:Characters Category:Program Characters Category:The Program